Part XII (Final): I've Gotta Be Me

Let the Long Night End
Part XII
I’ve Gotta Be Me

Whether I’m right or whether I’m wrong
Whether I find a place in this world or never belong
I’ve gotta be me, I’ve gotta be me
What else can I be but what I am?

∆

ONCE UPON A TIME…

Once upon a time, there lived two brothers. The eldest brother held no particular care for anything or anyone – except, of course, for his littler sibling. In many ways, they were opposites: the younger kind and generous, the older covetous and cold. They lived in wealth, for they had been birthed to fortunate circumstances and wanted for nothing.

But the elder brother had been born with a hole where his heart should beat, permanent and gluttonous in its consumption of all around. Although the elder brother had been showered with wealth in love and sustenance since birth, always did he crave more. Only in the company of his brother did he find some measure of peace, for the growth and adoration of the younger brought him a strange prideful joy he could not entirely comprehend.

“Look here,” said the elder brother. “Watch my hands.”

The youngest watched – and behold! In the blink of the eye, it seemed as though the silver piece the elder held had disappeared. “Where did it go?”

The elder brother reached behind his sibling’s ear, and when it withdrew he held the same piece of silver in his hands. The younger brother clapped and grinned, and his warmth was met by cool reciprocity. The younger brother had always enjoyed magic tricks above all other talents his elder sibling possessed.

One day, the elder sibling discovered his brother had obtained a trinket of great value – and in seeing the wealth his sibling has come into he was filled with jealousy. In the night, he stole away and destroyed the trinket, for he resented that it diverted his sibling’s attention from himself who ought to be above all other things. “If you love me as I love you, you’ll forgive me,” said the elder brother. And the younger forgave, for he indeed loved his brother.

Years passed. The younger brother found a lover – and again, the elder was jealous. The girl was a servant in their household, and the elder forced her from their land and into the unknown, from whence she never returned. Again, the elder said: “If you love me as I love you, you’ll forgive me.” And the younger forgave, for indeed he loved his brother.

One day, the elder brother embarked on a voyage to a foreign land, seeking rumors of the secret magics of the world that he might capture them. With these powers, he thought, he would win the affection of his sibling forever after – and in his secret heart he desired the dominion that this strength would bring him over others.

He searched for a full year and some months, until finally he discovered a woman lurking in the woods, living among animals as one of their own. A witch, was she, who stole away into the rooms of infants at night and drained their blood. Although feared and hunted by her prey, she had persisted supposedly for over one hundred years – and was rumored to have existed long before then.

“Who are thee, who seeks the company of the damned,” asked the witch. Boldly, the brother declared his intent that she should teach him her magics. The witch laughed. “Taught, this thing cannot be. Only purchased – for a price. Yes, for a price.”

“Any price, I am willing to pay,” said the brother. “Should you crave wealth I shall bring it to you. Should you crave a child’s blood I would steal one from its mother’s breast.”

The witch considered this. “No, it is not the blood of a mere child I desire. Your blood I will take, and in return the dark majesty I see within you will flourish out into creation. You will not know death, age, sickness, or fear.”

“A small price. Take it, then,” bid the brother.

The witch fell upon him – and he was changed.

The elder brother returned to home by moonlight, and was greeted in joy by his sibling. Yet the elder brother was cold to the touch and shied away, for he could smell the warmth within his sibling and yearned to take it for his own. In secret he fed upon his subjects, tore them apart in frenzy. Soon, the truth came to light – and once more the elder brother was confronted. “What have you done,” cried the younger brother. “You have become a beast.”

“I have become greater than any beast or man,” replied the elder brother. “In my kiss comes the death of age, of sickness, of fear. Accept me, brother, and we shall continue forever until all is dust and our bellies may feast no further. Love me, brother, as I love you.”

“I cannot,” said the younger brother. “You have made yourself like unto a beast. Through your hunger you have consumed all that was dear to me and left me barren. My soul, which to God alone belongs, may not fall alongside yours.”

“Then God may have thy soul,” said the elder brother. “But I shall have your blood.”

And so the elder brother slew his sibling and fell upon him, and wept as he imbibed – tears not of grief, but of pleasure and epiphany. For his hunger for his brother had finally been sated.

His hunger for others, however, had just begun.

∆

HALLOWEEN

Elias waited outside of the Matthews home – his home – as he forced down the last vestiges of bloodlust from his waking mind, concentrating on the fullness that had been brought to his belly rather than the sharp need for more. The cold, open air helped to center him and before long he was patiently waiting for his friends to join him in the moonlight. He toyed with his cape and gave a fashionable twirl, amused by the fluttering. Something inside the boy wanted to rebel – what he had, his sickness, was not something to be made fun of. It wasn’t a costume to be worn and discarded childishly. That same ‘something’ was the voice that told him he did not deserve happiness, that he was no more human than the lowest animal. Damned

The voice of the Enemy; the voice of Eli.

Tonight, he was not going to be Eli. He would be Elias; just another boy trick-or-treating with friends and enjoying life. And it was all thanks to the sacrifice of one exceptionally kind, generous man. Elias debated returning into the house now that his hunger had been cleared, to more properly thank Milton for his help. Decided against it. Milton would need his rest and anything else could be said when they returned.

Elias placed his hands together. He had played at prayer for Milton’s sake over the course of their relationship, his first act being as much a means of securing safety as it had been sincere. This time, he would reach honestly for God or Fate or whatever may be listening in the night. Please let this night last. He pleased through closed eyes. Please let it be good. Please please please.

He heard the door open behind him and turned to meet Oskar and Levi, dressed respectively as a killer clown and wolf-man in a tuxedo. And Oskar – with his hair returned to its normal color again! Another thing to thank Milton for before the night was done. They all exchanged glances and promptly burst out giggling – they looked so ridiculous, the three of them. Levi stopped laughing first and cleared his throat. “So, where did you want me to take you first? Theater, the festival, or…?” He brandishes a pumpkin bucket.

“I can’t have any, but we can still go door-to-door if you want to.”

“Theater should be end of the night,” Oskar grins and slashes his knife through the air. “After the Pissball Slasher has claimed his victims.”

“Yeah, I still don’t understand that name,” Levi rolls his eyes. “Festival, then. You can both officially meet Carmen.”

They decided on visiting the festival at the town square first and set off at a determined pace, waving as they passed by familiar faces from the church or their casual wandering throughout town. Ever so often, Levi would raise his head to the moon and howl deafeningly. Elias wondered if he did it for effect or if part of werewolf myths were indeed accurate – but decided not to ask. Elias would be just Elias tonight, and Levi would be just Levi.

Elias could smell and hear the activity before he saw it, and before long the festivities came into view. An entire block of Waynesboro had been converted into a Halloween extravaganza; a smorgasbord of orange and yellow lights, stands offering drinks of cider, alcohol, small cakes and other confections. Music was played over several radio sets, complete with the occasional witch’s cackle and booming guffaw that Elias supposed was meant to create a mood of spooks.

He pretended to be frightened by a passing man dressed in a swamp-monster costume and slipped his hand into Oskar’s. Oskar smiled and feigned stabbing at the Swamp Man, who appropriately clutched his heart and fell over ‘dead.’ “He’s not evil, he’s just misunderstood,” remarked Levi.

In all the noise, Elias found it a little difficult to focus on any one thing. A consequence of his sharp hearing, he supposed. But for the most part, conversation was limited to Levi or Oskar pointing him in a direction and showing off whatever had caught their eye. Eventually they came upon a food station, where a dark-skinned girl in a Superman (or was it Superwoman?) costume was handing out portions alongside a similar looking, older person. Probably her mother. She brightened when she noticed them and waved. “Hey!”

“Hey, yourself,” Levi replied shyly, looking around. “Business is booming.”

“Don’t I know it,” Carmen replied, peering past him to Oskar and Elias with a smile. “Oscar and…Eli, right?”

They nodded in unison. “Elias,” corrected the boy reflexively, but thankfully the word was lost among the noise. They accepted two slices of pumpkin pie from the girl and hung back while she and Levi chatted, Elias spearheading pieces of his own portion with a fork and taking turns feeding Oskar.

“The slasher is satisfied,” Oskar sighed contentedly, patting his belly. “When I take my revenge, you will be spared.”

Elias laughed.

Their attention returned to the stand when Carmen spoke with her mother and stepped out, taking Levi excitedly by the arm. The older boy cleared his throat awkwardly and gestured to the dance floor. “Feel like going for a spin, punks?”

Elias looked to Oskar expectantly. He managed to blush through his clown make-up and muttered: “I don’t know how to dance.”

“Neither do I,” Elias whispered into Oskar’s ear so that Carmen would not notice his accent. “But let’s do it anyway.”

“Let’s do the time warp again,” cried the radio sets. Partnered in twos, Elias and Oskar, Levi and Carmen, they joined the small crowd – mostly comprised of young adults and a few parents with children – and proceeded to move in step to the music. Early on, Oskar kept tripping or stepping on his feet, prompting giggles from his partner. “Du har två vänstra fötter,” Elias teased.

“Tyst, du!”

They danced for a long while, so long yet Elias paid absolutely no attention to anything except the music and the face of the boy before him. Such an odd choice of costume, so menacing and yet Oskar’s brightness shone through. He would have to ask the significance of the dress sometime. But not now. Now was for them alone. Song moved into song, people came and went from the floor, but the two young boys remained without a care in the world.

Elias wished that this moment could last forever. But inevitably, it had to end. Oskar was growing restless and eager to get to the process of trick-or-treating. There was also supposed to be a ‘spook house’ that had been set up by a particularly community-minded family, where guests could go in and be frightened by actors in masks. Elias secretly decided that if they went into one, he would show off his fangs and give the frighteners a fright of their own. In the spirit of Halloween, of course.

Oskar brought them to Levi and Carmen, who were barely dancing at all, absorbed in conversation and nearly nose to nose. Elias had noticed them absently over the hour doing much the same. From what he understood, they were likely catching up on years of missing each other’s lives.

“Levi, we were thinking of going house-to-house now,” Oskar waved his knife. “The Pissball Slasher requires tribute. But first I want to see that fright-house.”

“And I bet the Count of Waynesboro needs some candy too, huh,” beamed Carmen.

Elias lifted his cape to cover the lower half of his face and chuckled lowly. “Nay, I say,” he growled. “I have no need of candy. Let me suck your bluh-d.”

Levi scoffed and rolled his eyes, and they moved off from the dance floor. At Oskar’s insistence they moved to the fright-house, where a small line waited to allow in groups. A man in very convincing make-up waved the guests inside in intervals, the top of his skull missing and brain exposed.

Oskar hesitated. “Wait!”

All eyes turned to the blonde boy, who wore a panicked look. “Pictures! I wanted to take some.”

“Oh. Alright,” Levi glanced at Elias. “Do vampires show up in photos?”

Elias snorted, deadpan. “Hah hah.”

“I left the camera behind! It must still be in the kitchen at home.”

Levi clicked his tongue. “Well, I wanted to check up on Uncle anyway. We can go back together – “

Oskar shook his head quickly. “No, it was my mistake. I’ll go back and get it. You shouldn’t have to wait up for me.”

“Actually,” Carmen spoke up, cheeks darkening. “I need to make a house visit, too. My dad is sick as well,” she cast a meaningful look Levi’s way. The boy seemed to realize something and nodded. “I can meet you both back here, too?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Alright,” Carmen favored them both with a smile, then looked thoughtful. “Would it be impolite if I brought another friend with me on my way back? She’s a little shy and I don’t think she had anyone to enjoy the holiday with tonight. Maybe we could let her tag along for a bit?”

Levi glanced at Elias, who nodded brusquely. “The more the merrier,” said the wolf-boy.

“Great!” Carmen leaned forward and pecked Levi gently on the cheek, then pulled back and turned to Oskar. “We’ll be going in the same direction for about half of the way. Mind if I walk with you?” Oskar shook his head and the two began their trek back to their respective homes, watched by the ones who cared for them most in the world.

The two moved forward as the line slowly progressed, roughly taking in one new group per twenty minutes. Elias wasn’t sure how long they had already been away from home, but he estimated it had been at least an hour. After two other groups cycled in, they finally reached the front of the line. The door-man waved them forward.

Elias looked at Levi expectantly. “Well? Let’s go in.”

“You don’t want to wait for Oskar?”

Elias grinned. “We can go twice. If I know what’s coming, I can pay more attention to his face when he gets scared. And take pictures. Same with your friend.”

The wolf-boy grinned back deviously. “I think I’m starting to like you. Alright, let’s do it.”

∆

“So, I have to ask…” the olive-skinned Superwoman began.

“Hm?”

“Well,” Carmen spoke hesitantly. “You and Eli seem close. You’re cousins, aren’t you?”

“…Yes.”

“Oh! Well, it just seemed like you might be closer than that. That’s all.”

“Um…” Oskar quickly realized this was veering into territory that shouldn’t be broached this particular night. “Like you and Levi, you mean?”

Carmen immediately went quiet. Hah. Got ya.

“We’re not…like that,” Carmen replied wistfully. “Not really. He’s more like…”

“Your brother?”

Carmen winced. “No. Not that. He’s just…my friend. Someone who I chose and who chose me. No obligations like family or boy-girl stuff. That’s all.”

“I get it. It’s the same with me and Eli.”

“Even though you’re family?”

“Yeah. Because he’s the family I chose.”

“He?”

“She. Sorry.”

“So, who’s your friend you’ll be bringing back?”

“Her name’s Abby. She moved in here with her uncle a while ago, in one of the apartments. Around your age, I think.”

“It’ll be nice to meet her, if she’s anything like you.”

“Like me,” Carmen seemed perturbed. “You don’t really know me, though.”

Oskar nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. But Levi talks about you a lot. And I’ve never heard anything bad, so.”

“That’s sweet of him,” Carmen remarked, relaxing. “So…another question that might be a little awkward.”

“Ja?”

“Your voice…” she broached tentatively. “Not to be rude, but I’ve never heard an accent like yours before. It’s neat. Is it common in New Mexico?”

“I have some speech difficulties,” Oskar replied smoothly, prepared for this question. “It’s part my accent but part that, too. Eli too.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” Carmen blushed. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

The clown-boy waved it off, glad to have handled another potentially problematic question. If everything went right, tomorrow Carmen would be introduced into the circle regardless and the need for such stories would fade. But until then he had to maintain appearances.

They reached a crossroads, and exchanged glances, bathed in the light of the moon. “Well, looks like this is farewell for now,” Carmen smiles. “See you soon?”

Oskar smiles back. “Soon.”

They part ways. Oskar walks alone for a time, but inevitably finds his destination. He walks up to the front door of the Matthews home – his home – and knocks thrice.

∆

“That wasn’t so scary,” Elias mused as they left the house, circling from the backyard up to the front where a new group was already being admitted entrance. There was no sign of either of their companions, and a quick glance at Levi’s watch told them about twenty minutes had passed.

“Huh,” Levi looked around as they exited the house, squinting. “I thought she’d be back by now. Oskar too.”

Elias frowned. “Maybe they got lost or there was an emergency?” He was sure he hadn’t bitten Milton – there was no way that he could’ve been infected, could he? And Oskar was alone with him… No. No. Infection was impossible. But maybe he had taken too much blood. Maybe Milton was…was…

“Maybe we should go home. Make sure everything’s okay.”

Levi thought a moment. Nodded. “Yeah, let’s go,” he looked away for a moment and muttered: “Sorry, Carmen.”

Then they heard the shot – and all doubt was swept away.

They ran.

∆

Oskar could hear someone coming up the stairs – and he knew in his heart that it was not Milton. He had ransacked the man’s room in attempt to find another firearm, anything, to arm himself with. But his search had been for naught. The only other weapons were securely locked away in a metal cabinet – and he’d left the revolver behind when he’d run to Milton’s side.

He hid in Levi’s room and slammed the door shut, sliding the bolt closed. The footsteps paused, and he could see the shadow of a presence cast against the light coming from underneath the door. He held his breath. The shadow passed by.

He’s found us. Oskar thought with wild panic. He found us again.

There was a creaking noise, followed by a wet crunch. Something was being torn open…or apart. The sounds of gulping and slurping. He could run out the door, maybe make it down the steps before…no. No. He would be caught. And then…

Oskar realized his had drawn his knife, sunken into the corner of Levi’s room beside the bed. It felt so tiny, so inconsequential in his hands – and in that moment he came to realize he had not come so far since the forest, since Eli’s apartment, as he believed. He was weak. He was human. And he was powerless.

“So squeal.”

Again.

The footsteps came again, as did the shadow. They lingered there in silence, and Oskar willed himself not to sob. Please go away. Please go away go away just go away.

The shape knocked on the door.

“Squeal like a pig.”

Knocked again. A pause. “There really is no escape, you know,” said the voice behind the door. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t intend to harm you.”

Lies. Oskar summoned his courage and found it within himself to stand, holding his knife forward as a hunter held a spear. Waiting for the coming of the beast.

The voice sighed. “As you wish.”

The door smashed inwards, and Oskar screamed.

∆

Levi burst through the front door with Elias hot on his heels, and he was greeted by a scene of carnage. Two guns lay strewn some distance from one another across the floor, one unfamiliar and the other painfully recognizable. Blood was on the floor. The walls. The sequel to Halloween playing on the television. A man lay against the fireplace, unconscious or dead? Levi didn’t know.

There was no sign of Milton nor Oskar.

“You check upstairs,” Levi hissed rapidly, already running for the cellar. “I’ll look down here.”

Elias was already moving before the sentence had been finished, vanishing up the steps with feather-light footfalls. Levi rushed down into the basement, eyes wide as he hunted for his friends. “Milton? Oskar!”

There was a cry from above, and the sound of something being smashed. Levi’s heart pounded in his ears as he raced back up the steps and rounded into the living room, shouting for Elias. Someone stood at the top of the stairs leading to the bedrooms, someone tall and wide-shouldered, holding a small figure up by the belt of his pants as easily as though he were made of cloth. Oskar.

Levi’s eyes moved up to the shape…and the world fell away from him, drowned out in a silent scream. No.

The impossible shape walked with slow, purposeful steps, its distance from the wolf-boy declining with each movement. Bringing closer a face that couldn’t – shouldn’t – be staring into his own with such cold disdain. Short, well-groomed hair. Green eyes. A nose and cheeks that he knew from looking into his own reflection, masked beneath a wet layer of blood. All of it older, more mature, but impossibly smooth and young as the same time.

A little boy’s fearful whisper: “Father?”

The shape of Jacob Matthews stopped, just a step away from being level to him. A stranger’s voice came through: “No, I’m afraid not. Although I certainly am welcome to occupying the role.”

Levi gasped – and the illusion was broken. This was not his father. “W-where’s Milton?”

The thing that was not Jacob Matthews cast a glance back up whence it came and smiled. And in that smile, Levi saw his answer. “MILTON,” the boy screamed, shoving past the shape – past Oskar, who cried out to him – and up the steps. “MILTON!” He followed the trail of blood down the hall, past his own room and its broken door to…

Drip.

“No.”

Drip.

“No.”

Drip.

“No…” Levi fell to his knees. Milton lay in bed, shoulders against the headboard and legs neatly together and forward. His head was in his hands. And his neck…his neck was without its head. Blood had pooled around the corpse, soaked irreparably into the sheets and mattress, into a thin trail that dripped incessantly onto the wood floor. The head was smiling. Eyes closed, as if enjoying a peaceful dream. “No…”

The gun cabinet had fallen over. Someone was pinned underneath it, groaning. Elias. Levi didn’t help him. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. There was no room for those things inside him now. No room for anything.

Milton was dead.

Milton…was dead.

His uncle. Dead

His protector. Dead.

His mentor. Dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Forever.

Levi heard a sound. A dull, low thumping. Couldn’t place it. It seemed to be coming from all around him, beating in tune with his heart. The thumping grew – stronger. Louder. Louder. His breath came in short, heavy gasps, and his chest began to seize. His eyes burned. The pounding of his heart was all he could hear.

Levi turned to stare out the bedroom door and down the hall.

And stood up.

∆

Abraham carried Oskar out into the land beneath the open sky, slipped out into the Matthews’ backyard where none had yet arrived to observe. He would’ve taken the front door, but no doubt the gunshots had drawn attention – onlookers, soon to be police. Oskar had stopped screaming, once robbed of his knife which Abraham now possessed in his pocket. The boy simply shivered and shook, only crying out twice – once upon seeing Eli, and again seeing the other boy. What was his name, again?

Footsteps behind him. Abraham began to turn –

A sharp pain in the small of his back doubled him over, grunting. Another, far more visceral pain in his throat made him scream through a mouthful of blood. The vampire dropped Oskar, thrown back as the other boy, Levi, was sudden upon him with screams and slashes of clawed hands. Guarding his face with his hands, Abraham willed them into claws of his own and spat blood into the moon-child’s eyes, blinding him.

Dropping his guard, the vampire shifted his arms so that they angled upward, in an arc – and pistoned his hands forward up into the boy’s stomach. Levi gaped at him, stunned. Such beautiful green eyes. Then, the child’s body fell back into the grass, eyes staring up into the starry sky as he gagged on nothing and his blood began to spill in bursts.

Abraham licked his fingertips. Spat the blood out: rotten. As if he had fed on an animal or a corpse.

The vampire turned to where he had dropped Oskar and was pleased to see that the boy had not attempted to flee once more. He merely lay where he had fallen, motionless and pliable. Excellent – he was a much quicker learner than Eli or Abigail had been. Abraham held out hope for him.

Picking up his cargo, the creature in the shape of Jacob Matthews allowed himself to return to the face of ‘Abraham’, a face he had grown rather fond of, and spread his wings to carry the two of them into the night sky. It was fortunate he had drained Matthews of his reservoir of blood beforehand, as it would take much of that strength to heal his wounds before the night was over.

He could feel Eli’s anguish through their bond. Felt it as keenly as he would his own pain, right in his heart. And he smiled. Good, He thought. What you have given me, I now return. And what you have found, I take. Forever.

He flew.

∆

ALL SAINT’S DAY
DAWN

Damien Langley rubbed his eyes tiredly, elbows on the mess room table. “I’ve already been over this four different times.”

Howard Burns glared at his fellow law official, who had been freed from hospitalization shortly after confirmation he had not suffered more than a mild concussion. Of course, Damien himself felt it was much more than mild, but had been in no hurry to tell the nurse such. He couldn’t afford such precious recovery time – not now.

“Explain it to me again.”

“Which part?”

“The part where you decided to drive for hours to knock on Milton Matthews’ door. A man who is now dead, presumed the victim of another Muralist killing. A man whose nephew is in emergency care at this very moment and whose ‘other’ nephew and niece have been discovered to not exist at all according to one very confused sister of his.”

Damien licked his lips. Spoke slowly. “If you’ve searched the place, then you should know already why I went there. It was laid out in the damn kid’s letter collection.”

“The house was burned down,” Howard growled, and immediately Damien felt a shiver of cold. “It was set ablaze just before first responders arrived on the scene. Someone tampered with the gas lines and furnace. We’re lucky it didn’t explode in the faces of all those people crowded around it.”

“I don’t…”

“And you, my friend, were found on the scene. Knocked out by a concussion, lain out on the front lawn.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you claim you were knocked out while inside the house – which you were at, why, again?”

Damien closed his eyes, breathing deeply. A sharp knot of anger slammed his palms down on the table, startling the patients and workers who happened to occupy the hospital dining hall with him. “I fucking told you. I told you – I thought Matthews might be connected to the Muralist in some way and I went to talk to him about it. That’s it.”

“No, that is not it,” Howard seethed. He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “You went into his damned house already,” he whispered roughly. “You came out and you told me you found nothing. So either you were lying then, or you’re lying now. And if you’re lying about a murder case, I don’t give a shit if it incriminates me too. I’ll expose – “

“Milton Matthews wasn’t the Muralist killer,” Damien answered gravely, seeing his opportunity. “But he was being targeted by him. I went to see what he knew, and that’s when the damned guy showed up on Matthews’ doorstep. Took me out. Killed Matthews. And gutted the boy.”

The officer frowned even more deeply. “And how did you make this connection,” he asked neutrally. “Was it in the house?”

Damien nodded, thoughts racing as he spun a new web. “It was the kid – his fake nephew, Oscar. The kid kept a journal written over the course of nearly a year. Everything I needed to know was in it. But at the time, I couldn’t see the connection.”

“Which is,” pressed Howard.

Damien sighed. “I had a hunch back at the start that the killer, whoever he was, might have doubts about what he was doing. Remember the Saint Peter reference I made? Well, Peter was hung upside-down on a cross because he felt he was not worthy of the same death as Christ. Unworthiness. That’s the message I got from looking at Elizabeth’s murder, hidden underneath the pomp and posturing. Insecurity.”

“Serial killers are rarely doubtful of themselves.”

“I know that. Just listen. I knew the Muralist had to be religious, if not in a conventional sense. Matthews ran a church – and he started doing blood drives rather abruptly, didn’t he? With such strange limits like having only a few donations at a time and taking place weekly. It happened right after the Newberrie disappearance-slash-murder. Know why? I do.”

“…The killer came to him at his church. Confessed,” Howard’s eyes widened in realization. “And Matthews couldn’t tell anyone. So he tried to stop the killings a different way.”

“By feeding the ‘vampire’ in his flock,” Damien smiled grimly. “Matthews wasn’t a killer – he was the only person standing between the real monster and more murders. And he paid for it. The fake niece and nephew? They were the killer’s, I bet. His lures.”

The profiler knew his lie had taken root – he was a little impressed with himself, if he was being honest, for coming up with a halfway decent story so soon. And with a concussion, no less. If the circumstances weren’t so dire he might’ve felt some measure of concern at his capacity to lie so shamelessly. But now was not the time. “When the kid wakes, he’ll back me up on who killed his uncle.”

“When? The boy was gutted, Langley. It’s a miracle he didn’t die before paramedics caught him.”

“He’ll survive,” Damien replied confidently. The question is, what else might happen between his survival and the rising of tonight’s moon? I may not have to lie for much longer.

“Alright. Alright,” Howard cleared his throat, and much of the tension melted from his posture. “I’m considering believing you. Why go to Matthews alone? Why not call me the moment you figured it out?”

The profiler laughed. “Would you have believed me? I had nothing to prove there was a connection other than intuition. And I’d already spent that favor.”

“Fair enough. But you’re going to have a damned hard time convincing other people who don’t know about your little B&E into the man’s house.”

“Oh, I already have,” Damien winked. “I just need you not to contradict me by mentioning anything…illicit.”

“I think I hate you.”

“I can live with that. But I found the killer once. What do you think my odds are I can do it again?”

The officer was silent.

“Because…” Damien leaned forward. “I’m thinking the odds are good. Which do you hate more? Me. Or the man we’ve been chasing.”

Howard spat in his face. Damien wiped the residue off with a napkin. “You’re a real fucking piece of work, you know that?”

“I know. You should’ve seen me before I settled down. Now listen – I have a plan.”

∆

EARLIER…

Oskar grunted as he was deposited unceremoniously onto the freezing stone of the cave, snot running down from his nostrils as he shivered and shook. The flight had been harrowing in the chill, the cold of the evening amplified as they soared up ever higher and higher. The monster had refused to drop him, even though he prayed it would, and now it was busy resuming the shape of a man as Oskar cowered in the corner, afraid to do anything more than shiver and sob.

“Enjoy it,” said the monster in Swedish, turning to face him in clothes tattered by transformation. He wore the face of a man again, but Oskar knew it to not be his true face. The face of the man who had cursed Elias so long ago. The face that had haunted his nightmares for nearly a year. “This cold you feel. The panic, the rush of blood. It’s a remarkable thing – feeling your own mortality. You don’t truly miss it until it’s gone.”

The monster crept close, crouching beside him. Oskar cowered, unable to pull away any farther when a single long finger wiped away a tear’s trail. “You’re so afraid of me. What is it you think I am going to do to you?”

Something. Anything. You’re a vampire.

“Am I?” Oskar realized he had spoken his thoughts aloud. The monster seemed perplexed. “Yet you know vampires to be more than what legends have made of us. Little Eli taught you that, didn’t they? Or perhaps they didn’t. It would be like them, I suppose.”

“Elias is nothing like you,” Oskar managed to whisper through his chattering teeth. “He does what he has to, to survive. You’re crazy.”

“Elias? There is no Elias. Not anymore. Did you not see that for yourself? There is only my angel – my Eli.”

“He is not yours.”

“Oh? Are they yours, then? It would explain their reaction, when I came to collect you. I expected resistance, perhaps even flight. But to attack me…such childishness could only come from a place of love. It makes fools of us all.”

Oskar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. What could this creature possibly understand of love? He was a murderer, a torturer, and a pervert. He’d swallowed whole countless lives, Elias’ among them, now Milton’s and Levi’s, all for his own twisted gain. He was the face of every serial killer the boy had ever studied; every pair of black, empty eyes and frozen hearts. He was Evil. The only true Evil that Oskar had ever known.

“W…why did you follow us,” Oskar chattered. “Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”

“Because,” the monster answered simply. “I wanted to meet you. The boy who claimed the heart of my Eli, who was spirited away after such an open and public display. I knew it to be one of my own kind when I first read about you in the papers – a ritual killer, draining his victims of blood. Clever little Eli, who had found a helper. Was it you even then, before you fled with them?”

Oskar managed to shake his head. “No. It w-was someone else. An old man.”

“Ah,” the monster’s nose wrinkled. “I am sensing a pattern. Abigail did much the same. I had hoped to introduce the two of them.”

The shivering eased, ever so much. Free from exposure and dressed in the thankfully well-insulated attire of his costume, Oskar knew he wasn’t in danger of death by freezing. Not yet, at least, though the temperature was assuredly reaching that point with every passing minute. But if he could survive, hold out until daylight, then he could escape while the vampire slept. Make a run for it – somewhere. Anywhere.

“What was it that drew you two together, I wonder? Did they offer you money? Toys? Or perhaps…you wished to be like us?”

Oskar shook his head.

“Hm. What was it, then?”

Oskar said nothing. The monster sighed. “Very well. The direct approach…” the boy found his head clasped on either side by two frozen palms, rigid and immovable. The false-face moved in, and Oskar’s teeth clenched so hard it hurt as he realized what was going to happen. Don’t think about it. Go away. Go somewhere else.

He was kissed. And he could feel the memories that were stolen away – his first meeting with Eli. The cube. The candy. The basement. Eli revealed as Elias. The apartment. The pool. Everything and anything he had ever seen, heard, or felt in relation to his one closest friend. His love.

The monster broke the connection suddenly and recoiled, as if stung. Oskar worked up enough spit to attempt to hock out the taste of the creature’s lips.
“You…you…” the vampire bent over and laughed. “For simple friendship? That was all it took? I had expected such surprises, but this…” It lingered closer, smiling without a trace of malice or sadism. Somehow it chilled Oskar all the more. “And yet you think I am evil. Do you not see it?”

He spread his arms, as if to embrace. “The source of the Love you feel? Its timelessness, its beauty? It comes from me. All of it. Every smile. Every secret. Every tear. Every kiss. All…mine,” the monster leaned forward, eyes holding a pull that the boy could not break from. “I turned a beautiful little peasant boy into an angel. And that angel sought to visit grace upon you. You are only here to enjoy freedom from those who tormented you, today, because I chose Eli. And Eli chose you.”

The smile melted like wax within a tongue of flame. “Chose…you. Once, by themselves. And again when I came looking for the both of you in Oslo. They did not flee for themselves. They fled for you. All the way across the sea, here into this proclaimed New World. Why? Why do they love you? What have you sacrificed for them?”

The monster began to pace. “I sacrificed. I sacrificed for them. Sheltered them. Made them more beautiful than anything on this earth. They were my child – my family. The family I chose. I offered them such gifts – all refused. And yet, after all this time, the one to unlock my dear angel’s heart is just a boy without bravery or strength.”

It paused. “Perhaps it was your weakness that drew them. Maybe. I am certainly seeing enough of it now.”

“F…fuck…” Oskar couldn’t force the final word out.

The vampire held a hand to its ear, waiting. Smirked and dropped it. “Weakness. You could never be a threat to them. Not like me. And that is why they love you. Because, when it comes down to it,” the monster came close again, breathed into his ear. “Eli is a butcher. And you…you are just a pig.”

Oskar broke. The words, the simple clarity of them, the confidence with which they were cruelly spoken, cracked him in two in a way nothing ever had before. It was every doubt he’d ever felt, every question left unsaid about what he meant to Eli. About what he meant to others. To himself. The monster had taken his worst fears and reveled in exposing them for the truth they were.

And so, the boy cried and screamed. And the monster was satisfied. “It would appear we both understand, now.”

“You…you don’t understand anything,” Oskar spoke with a voice that was not his own. His voice was light and weak – this one dark and strong, with a hint of a growl beneath. Another’s voice. It spoke through him, shining cold and clear through the hot pieces of his broken spirit. “You think you know love. You think you know Eli. You think you know me. But you don’t.”

“Oh? Please, go on,” replied the vampire, intrigued.

The Voice inside Oskar spoke aloud with only his tongue, but he heard them as four: “You never understood love. Not from the very first moment.”

The monster stiffened. “…What did you say,” it whispered, deadly quiet. “What do you…”

It stopped talking. Realization had set in, and the sight emboldened the Voice inside Oskar to speak more loudly. “That’s right. You saw me – and I saw you. I saw Gabriel. How you manipulated him. Stole from him. Murdered him.”

The Voice picked Oskar up and brought him to his feet. “You murdered your own brother and you talk to me about family? Families protect. Families are kind. Families look after each other. They bring out our best selves, even when we can’t see that self in the mirror. You don’t know anything about kindness – you steal and call it a gift. You don’t know anything about protecting something that’s not you. Everything you’ve ever given to Elias are the things about himself he hates the most.”

The Voice sneered, and in that moment Oskar realized he had heard it before: once, looking into a mirror, with a pissball on his nose and a wicked smile on his face. That darkness, that intent, had returned to him now – joined in unison with the voices of others. Milton’s. Elias’. Levi’s.

It was his voice.

“You think you’re strong. And that Elias loves me because I’m weak. But really, you’ve got it backward. You’re the weak one. Because no matter what you do, no matter how much you’re shown the truth, you can’t help but run away from it: love is being brave. Love is putting yourself in someone else’s hands and trusting they won’t break you. Love is sacrifice. And you…have always been…afraid.”

Oskar laughed. “Maybe I’m a pig. But I’d rather be a pig than a coward.”

The monster’s eyes flashed, and in an instant it was upon the boy, gripping him by the throat and slamming his frail body into the cave wall. “You will regret that, boy,” it seethed through a mouthful of elongated teeth.

Oskar laughed at the monster. “Who’s the piggy now?”

The monster smiled emptily. “You. But…” its eyes drifted down. Back up. “Not for much longer.” It drew Oskar’s knife from its belt and ran the blade along the front of the boy’s pants, freeing a certain part into the cold air. Oskar thrashed wildly as he realized what was going to happen.

“Oh, don’t struggle now,” the vampire sneered. “Be brave.”

Oskar screamed as teeth sank into his shoulder. Again. Again.

The knife went – swish.

∆

ALL SAINTS DAY
TWILIGHT

It was day, yet the sun was nowhere to be seen. Thick, dark clouds had rolled over the landscape in the night and rained the first petals of snow upon the ground. From sunrise to sunset, no light could be glimpsed – only cold, gray shadow above.

Levi thought it was fitting.

People spoke around him. He didn’t listen. They had questions for him: “How do you feel? Do you have any special medical history we need to be aware of? Can you tell us what happened last night in your home? Do you recognize this man? Are you aware of your surroundings? Would you like to call your aunt? How can we help you?”

It was all just noise. Nothing was said that mattered. His eyes wandered to the holstered gun the police officer had at his waist. He would need a bigger gun than that if he hoped to slay the monster, when it came. The moon wasn’t long-off, now. The change would come soon – and Levi welcomed it. There would be pain, but pain itself was meaningless now too. Nothing could surpass the tight grip of agony around his heart, a deep suffering that neither time nor salve could ever ease.

He would change. Then he would die. Finally.

As time passed, he grew impatient. Contemplated assaulting one of the officers guarding his room, taking their gun and eating a bullet. Leaping from the window beside his bed and letting gravity take care of the rest. But he was tired – too tired to care if his death took a little while longer. Too tired to care if he took anyone with him. Everyone that had mattered was dead anyway. His father. Milton. Oskar, probably. Carmen.

Hadn’t that been a lovely thing to wake up to, courtesy of the girl’s grieving parents who had come into his room and embraced him as though he were their own, taking what solace they could even as he was sure their hearts were burnt to ash within their chests. Not like Carmen’s heart, which had been crushed. It had to have been the man on the stairs. The ‘muralist’ the papers called him. He had certainly painted a picture in Milton’s bedroom.

A picture that Levi could not escape. “Cephalophore,” muttered someone outside his room, when they thought him sleeping. “Killed Matthews and put his head in his own hands. Like a saint.”

Milton Matthews had been a saint. In that, Levi and the killer shared a common thought.

Something knocked on the window to his hospital room. He ignored it. The knocking came again, more insistent, and finally he rotated his head to view the disturbance. A small, child-sized figure was crouched on the windowsill, garbed in an oversized sweatshirt with the hood tightly drawn over their face. Dark eyes peered through darker sunglasses, watching from above a cloth tied around their lower face. They gestured a gloved hand at the window latch.

Levi looked to the closed door leading into his room. Back to the window. “Sure. Good as any.”

He slid out from his bed and put his feet to the floor, walking over to the window carefully so as not to remove any of his tubes and thus set off an alarm. He unlocked the window and slid it open, relishing the blast of frozen air that touched his blazing skin.

“You’re awake,” the boy remarked dully. “I thought you slept during the day.”

“I don’t have to sleep,” replied Elias, words muffled through his layers. “Not if I need to be awake.”

“And the sun?”

“I was lucky. Thick clouds. Thick clothes. And it’s sunset. These,” Elias gestured to the shades over his eyes. “Enough cover to be worth the risk.”

“If you say so,” Levi muttered. “Why are you here, Elias?”

“I was worried about you.”

Levi laughed. “Be serious.”

Elias’ brow creased. “Oskar…he was taken by someone from my past. The man who…” Elias hesitates. “The man who made me. They’re at Seneca Rocks, I can feel it. I need to save him.”

“And what do you think I can do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Elias replied sharply, though his voice barely raised an octave. “I don’t. But I can’t save him alone. I tried.”

“Back home.”

“Yes. I tried and he…threw me aside like I wasn’t even there.”

“You said he ‘made’ you,” Levi spoke softly, with an undercurrent of threat. “What did you mean by that?”

The vampire looked away. “Don’t make me say it.”

“I. Want. To. Hear. It.”

A heavy exhale. “His name is Léon. Or it was, over two-hundred years ago. He was the lord of the land my family lived and worked on. He…” Elias clenched his fists tightly. “He took me. Turned me. And eventually I escaped him.”

“But he found you anyway.”

“The first time…in Norway. That’s when I decided that we should leave the continent and go somewhere else, where he couldn’t find us. But…he just followed me anyway.”

“And you just let us take you in,” Levi rebuked flatly, eerily calm. “You never once thought it relevant to mention you had a psychopath on your trail. You never warned us.”

“I…” Elias hung his head. “I thought it would be different. I thought we got away.”

“And as long as anybody died except Oskar, it would be just fine anyway wouldn’t it?”

Elias looked stricken. “No! I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want you to get hurt or Milton to – “

“Die,” the older boy interjected, acid on his tongue. “Die. That’s the word you were going to use, right? He died because of you. Like Carmen died, because of you. Just like everyone who comes near.”

Levi could see tears sliding beneath the sunglasses. Didn’t care. “Except me. I get to be the one who lives. Always. I’m the one who gets left behind. By you. By my – “ His jaw snapped closed. Green eyes stared blankly forward. “Just…hurry up and get it over with. Be quick,” he leaned forward, stretching his neck past the threshold. “I’m ready.”

“Levi…”

“Don’t pretend we’re friends now. You owe me that much at least.”

“I don’t – “

“You can’t have people left behind as witnesses. That’s what you’re here for. That’s why you burned the house down. Just cut the lies and do it, already.”

Elias was silent for a time. Levi stood there, neck open for the taking, and wondered what was taking the kid so long. Finally, Elias spoke. “Why were you in the forest, that night that you found Oskar and I?”

The wolf-boy stiffened. Relaxed. “I was hunting.”

“Hunting what?”

“Elk.”

“Hunting it alone. Just before a full moon.”

“Yes.”

“Why wouldn’t Milton say so, then?”

Levi blinked slowly. “…You asked him?”

“Of course. He tried to lie, but I knew and he knew that I knew. Told me not to say anything about it to you or Oskar. I want to know why.”

“You know why.”

“I want to hear it.”

Snotty little brat. “Because I was going to eat the barrel of a twelve-gauge. That’s why. There – happy?”

“Tell me why you want to die.”

Levi scoffed. Leaned back. “You seriously have to ask?”

“I think I do.”

“What, my shitty life couldn’t compare to yours,” he spat bitterly. “Other people have it worse than me and want to live. Is that what you’re going to say?”

“Why are you afraid to answer?”

Afraid? Fine. If that’s how it was going to be: “Go to hell.”

“You’ve wanted to die since the moment we met. I could see it in your eyes, even when you tried to hide it. Or forgot, some days. Why?”

“Because I’m cursed, that’s why.”

“No.”

“Because I’m a fucking burden on everyone around me. It would be better if I was gone. Maybe I’m just a big goddamn pussy.”

“Why?”

Levi clenched his fists, ready to scream. But something in Elias’ voice, the sincere curiosity, the absence of judgement…freed his heart from rage. It didn’t matter – nothing mattered, now. Not this talk. Not his feelings. So…why not say it?

“…I killed my father,” Levi breathed out, exhaling the words and feeling cleaner for their absence.

Elias listened.

“My grandfather was cursed like me, too. That’s what Milton thinks. Thought. He fought it for at least the entire time since my dad was born, he’d been living with that curse. Until eventually, he hung himself by the neck on the night of a new moon and that was the end of it. Sixty-eight years old.”

Levi stared ahead with sightless eyes. “A week after he died, my father started to act…different. We thought maybe he was sick, but the doctors couldn’t tell us anything was unusual about him. His moods would change. He’d break things. And one night, while he and Uncle were out hunting, he finally changed. Milton had to shoot him over a dozen times before he finally fell over – and when the night was done, my father crawled right out of the damn thing’s belly naked as the day he was born. That’s how it began. My father, living with this…thing that stole our lives. And my uncle, doing what he could. They tried everything. Occult. Witches. Catholic ceremonies. None of it changed the outcome: every full moon, my father turned into an animal.”

The boy smiled emptily. “He fought. God, how he fought to beat this thing. To keep on being alive, not just surviving. I didn’t understand it, of course. I was just a kid. But I could see how it weighed on him. Got into everything that we shared together. And he did good, all things considered. Made it nearly five years before it got to be too much and he…well. He put a revolver in his mouth, the eve of the new moon. And he painted the guest bedroom’s wall with his brains.”

Elias listened. He might’ve sniffed, Levi couldn’t be sure.

“About a week later, I started to change. And that’s when he knew that whatever it was…” the boy closed his eyes. “It had been passed down. Somewhere, someone had contracted this thing first. And ever since then, it’s been eating my family inside and out.”

“If that’s true, why didn’t Milton have it?”

“Firstborn sons only,” Levi smiled sardonically. “Old-fashioned curse. If I’d had an older brother, I’d have been safe. My grandfather must’ve figured it out sometime after my father was born. Or he was just a tough son of a bitch who didn’t want to die. I don’t know. But he died and my father changed. My father died and I changed. The only connection we have is through blood and order of birth. Lycanthropy and suicide were the family inheritance I was born into.”

He turned to stare Elias in the eyes, reaching to pluck the sunglasses off the other boy’s face. “You want to know why I want to die? I want to die so that nobody else ever has to go through what my grandfather did ever again. What my father went through. What I went through. I want this thing to be over…I want all of it to be over.”

Elias watched him intently, black eyes filled with an emotion Levi couldn’t identify. “…How did you kill your father?”

Levi blinked. His vision was stinging, bizarrely. “My grandfather lived to sixty-eight. My father died after five years. The difference is that only one of them stuck around to hear their son say that it would be better if they were gone than to have them around. I told my father that if he was going to act like a crazy person every other week that he should just go away already. That every day with him had been terror, afraid he would collapse or blow up at any moment for any reason. I shoved him away and said it would be better if he was dead.”

He smiled, tears escaping the corners of his eyes. “I told my father to go die. So, he did. And Milton blamed himself, because I wasn’t brave enough to tell him the truth.”

Levi sniffed, looking away. “I don’t deserve to die. I deserve to suffer. But I’m tired, Elias. I’m tired of this life. This…half-life I’ve been living. I’m so tired. I want it to be over. So please…” his lips quivered. “Please just kill me. Please.”

Gloved hands reached forward to cup his cheeks. Levi relaxed, waiting for the twist that would fulfill his wish.

It never came.

“I can’t.”

“Why.”

“Because you’re my friend.”

Levi bared his teeth and shoved the touch away, his breath hot and heavy. “Friend. What do you know about friendship? Ever since I met you, everything I had left, everything I ever cared about, is gone. Dead – ever since you, you fucking leech, came into my life. I have never been more alone. I have nothing. No-one! And now you want – you want to be friends. Because you feel guilty. Sorry for me? Fuck you. I wish I’d left you and Oskar in that fucking forest to be animal food.”

Elias closed his eyes, nodding. “…You’re right. I’m sorry, Levi. Goodbye.”

The boy reached into the depths of his sweater and retrieved a small wooden ball, with a chain woven through the top. Set it on the windowsill. “…Goodbye,” the vampire repeated. He turned and leapt off the ledge, disappearing into the encroaching dark. Levi watched him fly off, and knew in some strange way that Elias would find Oskar. Would find the man who made him.

And he would die trying to save the kid.

Levi let out a sniffling sob, leaning over so his tears would fall to the snowy pavement below.

∆

Below, Damien waited in the hospital parking lot with binoculars held to his eyes, watching as the two children talked over a twelve-story drop. Whatever was being said, it had an effect – the one who must be ‘Eli’ spread his wings – wings! – and flew away. His car had been running for the last half hour and it took Damien no time at all to engage in pursuit, keeping the flying child in his sights while recklessly speeding past other unsuspecting vehicles.

Howard simply sat beside him in the passenger side, stunned and distant. Damien sympathized. It was hard having one’s understanding of reality completely upheaved. But for both their sakes, and the sakes of anyone else these monsters might prey on, Damien needed Howard to get over his shell-shock. Fast.

“How did you know,” Howard muttered, staring at the small fleck of darkness against a grey sky. Flying low, so as not to break the cover of the clouds.

“I didn’t know. Not for sure. But people are creatures of habit. And this particular creature has made at least one hospital visit before.”

“You know what it is?”

“I do. It’s a vampire, my friend. And it – along with the others we’re looking for – is responsible for all the murders in the last two months.”

“It doesn’t…no. No, that’s not possible,” Howard shook his head. “There’s got to be an explanation for – “

“For a flying child? I am open to your theories.”

“…” Howard closed his eyes. Opened them. “How do we kill it?”

Damien smiled. “That’s what I like about you, Howard. You’re practical-minded. But killing this one isn’t our priority right now.”

The older officer glared at him. “What could possibly be more important? You said this thing was one of the killers!”

“Yes. And it’ll lead us right to the others like it, where they can be taken care of all at once. You want to stop them?”

“Yes.”

“Great…” Damien exhaled. “Then get ready. I’ve got a shotgun in my trunk and a Winchester. Take your pick which one you want – we’re going on a vampire hunt.”

Eventually, Eli began to descend, and disappeared as he landed atop the north peak of Seneca Rocks.

∆

DUSK

Oskar woke to find himself bound hand and foot as well as naked, hog-tied by a thick leather belt that left him flat on his belly and unable to attempt at freedom. He tested his binds nonetheless, holding out some hope that the change – the change he sensed inside – had imbued him with the same strength seen in the monster and Elias. Nothing. He was still as limited physically as he had been when he was…

When I was human. The concept seemed so unreal – and it was, in its own way, funny. That after a year of struggle, consideration and doubt, the choice he’d agonized over had been taken from him. And all he wanted was for it to be taken back.

The monster seemed to think it was funny, too. It smiled at him. “Yes. It happened. There is no going back now.”

But there was more. Something had happened, just before the bite and the unconsciousness. His eyes burned – why was he crying? There had been a knife. His knife, discarded carelessly at the vampire’s feet, stained in blood. Something had been taken away from him. His…

“Something you may find interesting; when one of our kind is birthed, the hunger for blood is actually at its weakest. So weak, in fact, that starvation is possible if desired strongly enough. I discovered this in two cases, with angels that proved…uncooperative. They starved and they died. But once the first drop is taken, abstinence is no longer possible.”

The monster loomed over the boy (not a boy, not any longer). “I wonder. If I were to set you free, released into the wilds as you are, if you would choose the same fate. Would you have the will to resist? To rot? Or perhaps you will acknowledge instead that to live as one of the dark is better than to die in the light.”

Oskar closed his eyes. Nothing the monster said mattered.

“We’ll see, nonetheless. I have a special treat being brought your way, to welcome you into the covenant. Someone I believe you are familiar with.”

The boy’s eyes snapped open. “You can’t.”

“I can. I will. The question is…will you?”

“Elias is like us. Vampires can’t eat other vampires.”

“Are you so certain? I’ve already put that notion to the test, myself. And besides, your little Elias is no angel. He has chosen to lay with livestock. And will be treated as livestock.”

“Please,” Oskar begged. “Not Elias. Anyone else. Please. I love him.”

“Oh, sweet child,” the monster patted him on the head. “I loved my brother, you know. I understand the conflict. But there’s something else you and I know…”

It leaned close and leered. “That I loved his taste even more.”

∆

Levi stared at the ceiling and awaited the inevitable. The change was nearing. He could feel it…slithering beneath his skin. Clawing to be let out. Soon.

The door opened and a guard stepped in – a burly man in a police uniform, with tired eyes but a friendliness to his face. He’d been kind enough to Levi during his hospital stay. Geoff, judging by the name tag. “Good evening, son. Are you in the mood for a visitor?”

Levi blinked slowly. “Who is it?”

“Abigail,” called a soft, feminine voice from out of sight. “I was a friend of Carmen’s. She…talked about you, a lot.”

The boy winced, forcing his eyes shut to prevent the build-up of tears. “Alright. Come in.”

Geoff stepped to the side, allowing past a small blonde girl who padded over to Levi’s bedside with a contrite look. She scuffed her feet on the floor and managed half of a wan smile. “It’s…good to meet you.”

“I’ve never seen you before. You’re not a local, are you?”

“No,” she shook her head. “Not a local.”

“Yet you say you knew Carmen.”

“She was…a friend, to me.”

Levi smiled bitterly. “Yeah. She was a friend to me, too.”

Abigail came close, put her hand over the boy’s heart. The intimacy startled him, forced him to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry for what’s happened to you. I wish I’d been strong enough to stop it.”

Levi frowned, looking the girl over. Something about her struck him as uncannily familiar. “Who are you?”

“I’m…” she exhaled softly. “I’m just a ghost. Ready to stop haunting this world.”

Levi chuckled. “Well, maybe we’re alike in that.”

“I know that…there’s nothing that can be said. By anyone. The hurt won’t stop just because a stranger said they were sorry for your loss. I can’t take it away from you.”

“If you know that, then why are you here?”

“Because…Carmen was good to me. And she loved you. So I…owe her this much,” Abigail leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Levi’s lips.

The touch carried him, absorbed him, and drove him to a world of infinite blackness. And in that darkness…a pair of green eyes looking back at him. He reached out: “Carmen?”

Light.

She looks him over with a wry smile. “You look terrible. Did a pair of clippers insult your ancestors recently?”

I’m so sorry. I didn’t deserve you.

“I wanted to say…that I’m sorry.”

You deserved better than me. I wish you’d gotten it.

A smiling girl with a missing front tooth presents a gift to him. He is six years old: “Open it!”

You were my best friend. But I couldn’t be yours. Couldn’t be anyone’s.

“You’re my family, Levi. You always will be.”

I’ll miss you Carmen.

The connection deepened…and Levi realized that there was more to this than just his memories of Carmen. There was something Abigail was trying to tell him, to convey through these images. They went deeper…

“I’m Oskar.” The boy reached out a hand.

I didn’t take it because I didn’t deserve it. But…

“Because you’re my friend. Even if I’m not yours.”

You are my friend, Oskar. I was too scared to say it.

“It’s beautiful…thank you.” Elias smiles and holds his gift to himself. His first birthday in centuries.

Elias. You understood, didn’t you? In a way nobody else could. What it’s like.

“I’m proud of you, Levi.”

Milton…I loved you so much. I wish I had your strength.

“Someday, these memories will be all you have left of anyone here.”

I don’t want you all to just be memories…

Then do something about it.

The light dimmed…and Levi awoke back in the hospital room, in his bed. The girl was gone, the only trace of her presence left in the lingering tingle of her lips on his own. The boy swung his feet to touch the floor, walked over to the windowsill. He slid open the windowpane and reached out to pluck the small prayer ball, flicking it open to read the inscription he had carved with a hunting knife: “It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.”

Levi stared at the image beneath the inscription. A small family, sitting together by a fire, celebrating a birthday.

His family.

I still have things left to do.

Levi loosened the strings of his hospital gown and let it pool to the floor beneath him. Tied the prayer bead around his neck and stood on the windowsill, naked in the growing moonlight.

He stepped forward. The fall to the earth felt like freedom.

∆

Eli flew. It was his greatest skill: to escape danger, to anticipate it and ensure it avoided his person. That instinct had kept him alive for several lifetimes…
But tonight he did not run away from danger – but toward it. Oskar was in Léon’s hands, and Eli knew too well the horrors that monster could choose to inflict on him if the vampire desired. Knew that if anything had happened to Oskar, it would be Eli’s own fault.

He would’ve cried at the thought, but all his tears had dried up. All that was left within him now was a deadly calm and sharp purpose of being: save his friend.

Levi’s words, spat with hate: “Friend. What do you know about friendship?”

He was right, of course. Eli didn’t know what friendship looked like anymore. He’d thought what he had with Oskar, with Milton, had been friendship. Thought he’d approached something close to it with Levi. But he knew better now – friendship belonged to Elias Jamesson, the twelve-year-old farm boy who took after his mother, had an older brother for company and a sister on the way. It wasn’t for the likes of Eli, the murderer. The vampire.

Tonight, he needed to be Eli.

The child focused, digging deep into the dark parts of himself where a beast roamed uneasily, sensing the presence of another predator. He did not know how or why he could sense other vampires, only knew that his ability to detect them had been proven once before eighty years ago. And their ability to detect him right back.

South-east. His inner voice told him.

Léon…Eli had hoped him to be dead and gone. Swallowed whole into the dark recesses of the earth, where creatures like him belonged. He should’ve known better – everything that was swallowed eventually was deposited back onto the earth.

He circled Seneca Rocks, spying a prone figure and one standing man atop the north peak – Oskar and Léon. Folding his wings to his sides, Elias began to dive.

∆

Oskar’s hopes plummeted with Elias’ altitude as he observed his friend dive for their position, deadly fast and focused solely on the monster that had hounded them from one nation to the next. The monster simply spread its arms welcomingly and embraced its victim as he flew directly into its torso, catching the swipes of the boy’s claws and holding them pinned behind his back.

“Hello, Eli,” the monster greeted cordially. “So good to see you again. And nice, I think, to have you chase me for a change.”

Elias replied by driving his knee into the monster’s groin – it simply laughed. “Oh, little angel. You should know better by now.”

Elias wrenched himself free by kicking his feet off the monster’s chest, but as he pulled away the monster allowed its nails to rake deeply into the boy’s naked shoulder, freeing small droplets of precious dark blood. In an instant, Oskar could smell it like he had never smelled anything before – blood. Rich, red, tantalizing blood that was all for more alluring for knowing it belonged to Elias. The newly turned vampire licked his lips unconsciously and knew that if he were not bound he would’ve already pounced to lick up the drops that lay on the rock before him.

The two predators circled one another, the latest addition to their ranks prone in the center between them. Elias looked pained, and Oskar knew that the boy wished nothing more than to rush to his side. But first…there was the monster to take care of.

“Will you not speak,” asked the monster. “Has time and terror robbed you of your tongue? I seem to remember only cutting out the one part of you.”

Elias’ face contorted into a mask of fury, and he tensed in preparation for a lunge. Hesitated. Returned to his rounds. “Oskar,” he murmured lowly. “Are you hurt?”

Oskar wanted to speak. Couldn’t find the will to. Instead, he looked down at himself, then back to the drops of blood. Back to Elias.

The shock was written over the pale boy’s face. “You…”

“Changed him. Yes,” the monster confirmed proudly. “Oskar Eriksson is now an angel, just as you used to be.”

Elias stopped moving, so livid that his shoulder shook with restrained wrath. “You don’t know anything about God or angels. You’re nothing but a devil.”

The monster scoffed. “If I’m a devil, then so are you. And now…so is he.”

“You’re right,” Elias’ hand drifted behind his back. He bared his teeth. “But only one of us belongs in hell.”

Lightning fast, he drew a revolver – Milton’s revolver, Oskar realized – and fired a shot, striking the bigger vampire in the chest, right through the heart. The monster blinked and stumbled backward, its blood sprayed against the stone at their feet, and managed to look surprised. “You…” it croaked, stumbling to its knees and growling. “You…little…monster…” It coughed blood and staggered to its feet, stumbling closer.

Elias ran to Oskar and untied him, pulling their bodies close. Too close – Oskar could smell his blood. Wanted it. But…

“Hold on to me,” Elias commanded, dropping the gun and rushing them both to the peak’s edge. Without hesitation Elias threw himself and Oskar over the edge, spreading his wings to glide them both safely to the forest floor. But the weight was too much for his depleted body’s strength to manage, and their fall did not carry him far enough into the peak – they fell and crashed into the surely frozen waters of a rushing creek.

Surely. But Elias wouldn’t know – he didn’t remember how cold felt, anymore. All he knew to feel was Oskar.

∆

“Holy shit…” Damien exhaled sharply, binoculars following the rapid descent of one naked, falling boy who disappeared into the shadow of the cliffside, in the arms of another shape – Damien would bet any money on the two being Oskar and Eli. Dropping his sight aides to let them dangle around his neck, he turned to Howard. “Two of them just took a dive off the peak. We have to get to wherever they landed, make sure they don’t get away.”

“What about the other one,” the policeman asked, hefting his shotgun. “There’s a path leading up most of the way to the peak – one more, right? And there was a shot. Someone could be fighting for their life right now.”

Damien turned to his partner. “Fine. I’ll take the jumpers, you take the peak?”

Howard scratched his beard, less than enthused. “We should’ve called in back-up.”

“None of them would have the stomach to do what needs to be done. The adult one, maybe, but the two kids? Someone would hesitate – and they’d get away. We can’t let that happen.”

“Right…alright,” Howard looked up to the peak. “Any of the stories you’ve read mention how a vampire stands up to buckshot?”

“Not a one.”

“Well. Guess I’ll have to go pioneer that bit of information then,” Howard racked the pump of the shotgun and set off on his way. Damien watched him leave with a strange ache in his heart. He’d become fond of the old man. It was a shame that they would probably never see each other again after this night.

Rest in peace, friend. Damien turned his eyes to the place he’d seen the falling child land. Maybe after I bring back ‘Nessa, I can bring you back as well. Try not to take it personally.

He’d intended on negotiating a deal with the three vampires. Now, though, he had an opportunity to get them minus one – he’d swiped a few hypodermic needles and other items from the hospital supply to draw blood, saliva, and whatever the hell else he might need. If the things were dead, he could use those supplies to get something from the remains before getting to the peak and meeting with Howard, assuming the other man survived.

If they were alive, perhaps they’d be willing to strike a deal. Damien had a few ideas in mind for how to go about that process, too. And if they refused…well. That was what the rifle was for.

Damien hustled through the dark, guided solely by his intuition and flashlight, running as quick as he dared in the uncertain forest footing with the cold and clear moon shining down. Somewhere out there, the answer to every question he’d ever had about fate and faith awaited. He wasn’t going to let it slip through his grasp.

A wolf howled in the distance.

∆

Howard rushed to the summit of Seneca Rocks, sweating furiously even in the near-zero temperature. This was it: the last few steps before he faced death. Death that flew on two wings and walked like a man. The killer he’d been chasing for two months was nearly in his grasp.

He just prayed that when the time came, he didn’t miss.

When he reached the peak, however, all he saw was a single man laying prone on the ground, naked save for the pair of pants it wore and a small knife tucked into its belt. Black blood pooled around the body that glistened in the moonlight, a gun lay discarded some feet away, and Howard could see a clear exit wound through the man’s front and outside his back.

He approached cautiously, Damien’s shotgun raised and at the ready. This could be a trick – the vampire could be playing dead. Waiting for him to get close before it…

The body shivered, fingers flexing. Howard shakily took aim.

The body raised itself up entirely using the strength of its legs, back arched and arms hanging limply at its sides. Empty death stared at him through black eyes carved from the darkest obsidian, and the policeman felt fear writhe in his guts like a snake. “Don’t move,” he commanded. “Stay where you are or I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”

The vampire watched him with the same blank stare. Stepped forward. Howard fired and blew off the thing’s left ear and put one of its eyes out with the spread. Blood dripped from its face…and it kept coming.

Howard turned and ran. But it caught him anyway, ending their brief chase with a clawed hand through the back of his neck.

∆

Oskar spluttered and coughed as he rose from the rushing water of the creek, his beaten body carried by the flow to arrive limply against the twigs and dirt that make up its shore. He heard Elias behind him, moving sluggishly to join him on the shore. They lay there together, staring up at the sky. “Elias…thank you.”

“For what?”

“For saving me.”

“Oh,” Elias’ voice cracked. “Oh.”

His friend looked down to Oskar’s groin, the flesh still stained with the blood that had come spurting after…after…

Oskar shut his thoughts down. Didn’t want to remember. “Don’t blame yourself. Please.”

Elias sniffed. “It’s my fault. I’m the reason he did this to you.”

Oskar shook his head, surprised at his calm. “No. It did this because that’s what it does. It’s a monster. You’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know. But…” he thought of Milton. “It’s what I believe.”

Oskar kissed Elias lightly on the cheek. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”

“Y…you’re welcome,” Elias cried with tears trailing down his cheeks. They lay there for a few minutes, relishing one another’s company. Oskar asked if Levi was alive – Elias nodded, but said that Levi had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

Oskar couldn’t blame him. But felt sad nonetheless, and shed a tear. “We should get going.”

They weakly picked themselves up, stumbling naked in the dark, though now both of them could see equally well. They’d made it some distance from the peak when they heard the booming report of a gun going off…precisely from whence they came. Then, deafening silence.

Elias’ eyes widened as something – someone – came careening off the peak with wings spread. “Run!”

They took each other hand-in-hand and ran, the flying undead coming in low amid the first flakes of snowfall. It landed ahead of them, cutting off their path, and stared with eerily blank eyes that shone in the light. “Eeeeeee…” it gurgled, stepping forward with unsteady feet as though it were an infant learning to walk for the first time. The monster – stripped of all its façade of humanity, wearing its true face proudly now as it grew ever closer.

Elias stepped between Oskar and the monster, eyes terrified but words steady. “Oskar…go.”

“No.”

“Go!”

The monster broke into a sudden sprint, and fell upon them with all its weight, throwing Oskar aside and Elias to the ground. It wrapped its hands around Elias’ head and began to wrench violently from side to side, putting all its strength into attempting to tear the boy’s head off. Oskar screamed a denial and threw himself at the monster, his hands slipping into the thing’s belt and retrieving his knife, which he drove into the monster’s neck. It released one hand from Elias’ head to grab him by the hair and throw him to the side, where his back met a tree with a sharp crack.

Oskar fell and couldn’t rise. He was numb below the waist.

Elias managed to pull his legs up and kick out, forcing the monster off him, and staggered to his feet with a dazed look. The monster stood there with a knife buried in its throat and did not move, watching with the same blank expression. Oskar saw how its legs tensed for another lunge and cried out – but Elias was already moving, avoiding the monster’s clutching hands with a deft dodge to the left.

A sudden crack boomed through the air, agony to Oskar’s sensitive ears, and the side of the monster’s head exploded outward with brain trailing in pink ribbons out the back of its skull. The vampire lurched, falling to the ground.

A young man, one Oskar recognized from Milton’s house, stood in the moonlight with a scoped rifle in hand. He ran over to the rising monster’s undead body and fired another shot into its chest, drawing back the bolt and expending the cartridge. It ignored his efforts and grabbed at his ankles, only barely missing as the man leapt back. Elias shouted: “You can’t kill it! It’s not alive!”

“Sure looks fucking alive to me,” the man shouted back, but looked to Oskar. Coming to a conclusion, the man looked back to Elias. “Can you run?”
Elias nodded.

“Then let’s run,” the man scooped up Oskar in his arms easily and ran in step with Elias, the three of them crashing through the dark forest as behind them an indefatigable beast of hell slowly pulled itself to its feet and resumed its pursuit. It would never stop, Oskar realized. Never. Not until all of them were dead.

They reached a frozen bed of water – a lake, turned solid by the cold so that the surface shone like glass sprinkled with white flecks of snow. The moon shone bright above, and the ice reflected so that it almost seemed aglow, brimming with a reflection of a reflection of the sun. The closest substitute Oskar knew he would ever have for feeling the sunlight again.

They began to cross, but Damien stopped when the ice began to creak threateningly under his weight. “We can’t run like this. We have to slow down.”

“Give him to me,” Elias demanded.

“No way,” Damien shook his head. “I’m not getting ditched, Eli. Sorry.”

Elias’ eyes narrowed. “How do you know that name?”

“I know a lot about you, kid. Maybe we can share a bit after we get out of this – name’s Damien, by the way.”

“Damien…” Oskar murmured. “Milton said that was a saint’s name.”

The man scoffed. “Yeah. Well, I’m no saint. But right now you can consider me the goddamn messiah so long as you trust me. I’m here to help.”

The beating of wings. Damien’s eyes widened. “Let’s go!”

Damien and Elias ran, Oskar carried in the former’s arms like a child, and together they made it halfway across the frozen waters before a shadow from above darkened their steps. They broke into separate directions as the vampire slammed into the ice, breaking through the layer and disappearing into the dark depths below. The cracks spider-webbed from the hole, and Damien looked down to see the ice giving way beneath his feet.

He looked to Oskar. Decided. Heaving his weight, Damien threw Oskar aside just as the ice gave way completely and he disappeared into the water beneath the lake. The blonde boy slid along the surface of the ice, too light for it to break away, and rolled to the shore at the opposite end of the lake. Still trapped in the center with his path forward built on unsteady ice, Elias’ eyes were focused on the water shifting below at his feet as the nude boy waited for the monster to surface.

The monster burst through the layer of ice beneath Elias, grabbing him by the ankles and pulling him into the dark waters of the lake.

And Oskar…could do nothing.

∆

Eli wrestled with the devil beneath the deathly cold waters of the lake, struggling and fighting in absolute blackness barely penetrated by his preternatural vision. He managed to free his legs by kicking the monster in the face and quickly swam for the surface, beating his fists against the layer of ice, looking for the opening he’d been dragged through. Couldn’t find it.

Eli drew back a fist – and felt hands wrap around his head, wrenching him around to stare face-to-face into the dead gaze of Lord Léon Larsson, where nothing now remained in his single intact eye. No joy. No hate. No thought. Simply death.

The monster tightened its grip and attempted to continue where it has left off, wrenching Eli’s head in an attempt to break his neck. But under the water it could not move so swiftly and so though Eli’s neck ached from the sharp motions it did not break and he beat his fists against its face.

Growing irritated, or perhaps simply tired of failure, the living corpse slammed the back of the boy’s head against the ice. Once. Twice. Thrice. Eli’s vision darkened and his limbs went limp in the water. The monster released him, watching the blood that leaked from the child’s head as his body sank into shadow, and turned its eyes skyward. The emptiness inside its heart propelled it to the surface, easily breaking through the lake surface and crawling to stand unsteadily atop the ice where it glared at its final target – a pale, thin, nude boy with short blonde hair trying desperately to crawl away.

There was no thought in its actions. No words were imagined. Only desire – a single, thunderous drive was all that remained from its former self, the last feelings of a vacated spirit.

Destroy.

It approached.

∆

Oskar’s heart fell into his bowels as the ice broke and the monster dragged itself loosely onto the lake surface, water and black blood running in trails over its flesh to mix with the ice and snow. Elias was nowhere to be seen…and Oskar was alone.

Dragging himself with his arms, Oskar willed his legs to work as they trailed uselessly behind him, inching away piece by piece even as he heard the approaching footsteps of the monster. Get away: he had to get away. But it was useless – he was weak, starved, and crippled…and the monster’s shadow fell upon him. Oskar laid his shoulders down and waited for the end, staring blankly into the dark of the forest.

A pair of luminous eyes stared back, twin bulbs etched into a face cast in shadow.

“…Milton?”

The figure cocked its head, issuing a low whine. Crouched to its knees and spread a pair of clawed hands wrought in black fur. The walking dead halted behind Oskar and stared uncomprehendingly at the newcomer, swaying eerily in the wind.

A prayer bead hung from the furry creature’s neck. Something that should’ve belonged to Elias…but had been given by –

“Levi,” Oskar breathed in shock. The werewolf raised its head to the heavens and howled, a long keening that echoed through the forest. Then it set its shoulders and charged forward with incredible speed, dropping onto all fours and lunging to tackle the vampire clear across the ground. They fell and rolled in a heap down a slope, out of Oskar’s sight, and the sounds of snarls and tearing flesh could be heard.

The boy dragged himself to a tree and forced his back to rest against it, breathing hard. A sharp yelp bit at his ears, chilling his spine. Levi was being…
Oskar closed his eyes and sobbed. Useless. Always useless. Why does everyone always have to fight for you?

Suddenly, Damien burst from the hole in the frozen lake he’d fallen through, absent his rifle and shuddering greatly as his body fought to remain functional in the deep cold. The man dragged himself over the ice, coughing and hacking up lungfuls of water until he made it to shore, where he fell limply against the dirt, gasping.

Their eyes met, the older man’s mismatched eyes blinking slowly. “Kid…you alright?”

Oskar shook his head. “I can’t – I can’t walk. My back…”

Damien forced himself to his feet and staggered over, blue and shaking hard. He looked to the direction of the commotion, hearing clearly the sounds of violence. “Eli?”

“Eli’s…” Oskar sobbed and looked at the lake. “It’s Levi. It’s killing him.”

“Wolf-boy? Shit…” Damien’s face fell and he suddenly dropped to his knees, holding his arms to his chest. “I…I think it’s killed me, too,” he looked down at himself. “I can’t feel anything.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy replied lowly, not knowing what else he could say. He hung his head. “I can’t…I can’t do anything!”

But you can, said the Voice inside. If you had blood. You could save yourself. Save Levi. Save Elias.

I…I can’t. If I drink, then I’ll never be able to stop. Milton didn’t want us to kill. Maybe…maybe it’s better if we just…

Lay down and die? I thought you weren’t a coward.

I’m not! But… Oskar could see the faces looming in the dark – brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes still open because he’d chosen humanity over immortality. The people alive because he hadn’t joined Elias in the dark. If he just died here, let himself starve, those people…they had loved ones. Family. People they cared about just as much as he loved his friends. He couldn’t just…trade them.

Another sharp yowl. Oskar cried and held his hands to his ears. You’re letting them down again. You didn’t choose to be infected. But you can choose now – save them, or don’t.

The question was simple: Whose lives do you care about more?

Oskar blinked. Slowly lowered his hands from his ears. Before him, Damien croaked and struggled to breathe, trembling in the dirt. He looked so…frail. In his face, Oskar saw a dozen crying families, men, women, children. Begging him. Pleading for mercy. “You let us live! Please…!”

He saw Milton, heartbroken and disappointed. “Remember what I said? There’s more to life than three people. They aren’t worth sacrificing the world for.”

Oskar sighed. And when he spoke to the shade of the pastor, it was with a Voice that deep down he knew had always been his own. “I’m sorry. But you were wrong. They’re the only things worth anything.”

He leaned forward and let his teeth sink into the Damien’s throat.

∆

Eli floated in darkness, wrapped in still water that trapped him in a smothering embrace. His head throbbed and his vision swam uncertainly, having found itself looking up from the bottom of the frigid reservoir.

He couldn’t drown. But he couldn’t move, either, and so lingered in stasis. Waiting for an end that may never come.

He’d tried to be strong. For Oskar. For Milton, who’d died unfairly. For Levi, who had lost everything that made living matter. For all the people who had died because of a man who had swallowed so many lives trying to fill an empty hole in his soul. But he’d failed. All that was left to do, now, was wait. He was ready to be judged. Maybe he would be found guiltless. Maybe not. But Eli knew now that his choice to live – and it had always been his choice, he knew that now – had caused only pain for himself and those he cared for. It had killed them, mutilated them, broken them all into pieces. He could blame Léon…but instead, he blamed himself.

He wondered if he needed an invitation to pass through heaven’s gates.

Oskar…Milton…Levi…thank you.

He would die now. Yes. But he’d die as he had been…not as he had been made.

As someone human. Someone who had been…loved.

The water was disturbed above. Someone was swimming down to him, wearing a face that made Elias – not Eli – smile. “Oskar,” his lips moved soundlessly in the dark, calling to his friend. Oskar reached out a hand.

Elias took it.

∆

Two monsters wrestled in the light of the moon, bleeding over an arena of dirt, stone, and wood. One was soundless and without emotion, the other loud and furious. They tore at each other with swipes of claws and the wet rips of teeth sinking into flesh, neither willing to surrender.

The angry monster was losing. Torn between two worlds, anchored only by his own will and focus on the memory that his prayer necklace provided, he felt every injury and every drop of strength bleeding from his body. His body was being broken as his spirit was gnawed upon by the anger of the beast inside, the monster that wanted only to destroy and maim until its eternal hunger was satisfied.

He wouldn’t let it. Never. Not to Oskar. Not to Elias.

The vampire was tireless and unflinching, barely reacting even as Levi had bitten off its cheek and torn its torso to ribbons with swipes of his sharp claws. He himself was bleeding in too many places to count, his strength fading as the struggle continued. He was going to lose.

The thought didn’t frighten him as it should have. At least here, now, he would die not as a monster…but as still something close to a man.

His foe caught his wrist and squeezed like a vice, the bones cracking painfully so that Levi screamed even before it drove a hand into his belly in a familiar move, fingers rummaging through his ruptured guts. Thrown to the ground, the creature straddled his chest and drew back a hand for the killing stroke.

Someone jumped atop the creature’s back, wrapping their arms around it in a chokehold as they fumbled to grasp the knife in its neck, ripping it free. The monster reached and grabbed the offending entity by the hair, throwing them off so hard that the hair gripped tore from the scalp. The figure rolled across the ground, gasping, and raised its head.

Oskar, thought Levi.

The monster turned, facing the direction of the boy, then swiveled its head as a branch snapped and Elias stepped into the moonlight, dashing past the monster too quickly for it to grab him but striking it across the face nonetheless, blinding its remaining eye. Both he and Oskar’s mouths were bloody – they were naked, dripping wet as though they had climbed out from a bath, yet neither seemed bothered by the cold. Their eyes were solely on the monster…and Levi saw nothing but murder in their gaze.

Well. He wasn’t going to let them have all the fun.

Levi staggered to his feet, swaying unsteadily as snow caressed his cheeks. The three boys circled their target, who could not keep its attention focused on all of them, reliant only on a single ear to detect their movements. The children of the night exchanged glances, wordlessly sharing a thought: Now.

The monster turned to meet Levi’s heavy punch to the side of its head, neck twisting with the force. It took a dizzied step back, and as it brought up a claw to retaliate only for Elias to slide between its legs and kick out at the back of its knees, the bones shattering with thunderous crack. Then there was Oskar, knife in hand, falling to his knees before the monster and driving his knife into its belly, drawing it straight from one side to the other with a bloody grin.

The monster’s guts fell steaming into the snow. It reached out both arms to attempt to grab at the boy, but Levi and Elias both took one arm each, holding them in place with all their remaining strength. The two boys pulled as one, and there was a sharp crack followed by a wet rip as they tore the monster’s arms from their sockets and threw them to roll along the forest floor. Helpless, the monster sat on its broken knees, unable to do anything except open its mouth and rasp: “Eeeeeee….”

Oskar grabbed the monster by the throat and drove his knife into its chest, again and again and again and again, staring hatefully into its empty eyesockets as he screamed. “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? ARE YOU SCARED?! HUH? WELL, FUCK OFF! SQUEAL! SQUEAL LIKE A PIG!”

He stabbed the corpse until his body was dripping in its blood and the knife slipped from his hand from the slickness. Levi and Elias approached slowly, gripping the sides of the monster’s head. Oskar looked up at them. “Wait,” he bid coolly. “I want to do it, too.”

He wrapped his hands around the vampire’s throat. Looked between the three of them with icy eyes. “Ready?”

Elias nodded. “Ready.”

“Ready,” said Levi.

They summoned their collective strength…and together, tore Léon Larsson’s head clean off, bathed in the light of the moon and the darkness of his blood.

The three naked boys traded looks…and as one, began to smile.

It was over.

Levi held a hand to his stomach, painfully spitting up a mouthful of blood as he felt the pain in his innards grow. Knew what it meant. But he paid the injury no mind, joining his two friends as they all stepped in close together and embraced, relishing the coolness of their skin against his heat. “Sorry I was late…” he murmured.

“You were just in time,” Elias countered gently, squeezing his hand.

“Thank you,” said Oskar. “Both of you. For coming for me.”

“Oskar, you’re…” Levi trailed off.

“I am. I had to be. For both of you.”

“How will we go on? The blood drive can’t happen anymore. Not without Milton.”

Oskar was quiet for a moment. Pulled his friends closer. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, as long as I have you. We’ll make it – together.”

“Make it, huh,” Levi laughed. “Make it to where? I could use a vacation. I hear Barcelona’s nice.”

“Somewhere,” Elias replied confidently, looking to the horizon. “Anywhere. Let’s go.”

“Yeah…” Levi whispered. “Let’s go.”

Hand in hand, they left the blood and bodies behind…disappearing into the night.

The three boys staggered through the woods for hours, moving at a slow pace so as to not grow too far from Levi who had grown faint. Eventually Oskar and Elias had to carry him from either side, supporting the older boy as he feet dragged against the ground and blood ran from his belly to soak into the dirt. The moon had fallen away from sight, and there were the beginnings of light just barely creeping over the horizon.

They broke into an open field, and their collective hearts fell as they realized there was no way they would all be able to cross at their sluggish pace before the sun would fall upon them. Levi looked between his friends and sighed. “End of the road, fellas.”

Oskar shook his head. “No. We can make it, you just have to – “

“Oskar…” Levi whispered. “Put me down. I’m ready.”

Oskar looked to Elias pleadingly, but the black-haired boy merely shook his head. Throat clenched, he helped lower Levi to the ground so that his backside rested in the grass, green eyes on the horizon. Elias kneeled beside Levi and took his hand – Oskar followed suit.

Levi watched the horizon with a funny smile. “So this is it. It’s strange. I…I should be scared, right now. But I’m not. I’m…glad.”

Oskar blinked uncomprehendingly, eyes burning. “Glad?”

“Yeah. Glad. I always thought I’d die in some…dark place. Alone. Without meaning. This is better,” he coughed and vomited up another spurt of blood, gasping in pain and falling back to lay prone against the grass. Oskar loomed over him worriedly, but Levi’s eyes still held a shine. “O…Oskar…I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you.”

“You didn’t have to be! You were more than a friend to me. You were…you…” Oskar’s tears dripped onto Levi’s face.

“And Elias. What I said to you…I’m sorry. What’s happened wasn’t your fault. Nobody deserves to be…hated for wanting to be happy.”

Elias looked away, eyes brimming with unshed sorrows. Levi reached to his neck and unbound the prayer necklace, pressing it into the boy’s hands. “Here. This is yours. It’ll…always be yours.”

Elias let out a single sob and held the gift to his chest as he and Oskar cried, heedless of the approaching sun. “We let you die,” Oskar croaked.

“No,” Levi closed his eyes. “You helped me remember.”

“R...remember?”

Levi whispered something. They leaned closer. He whispered again: “What it’s like…to be alive.”

∆

ALL SOULS' DAY

The sun fell over the forests around Seneca Rocks without great fanfare, its majestic golden rays finding a home among the trees, the ground, and across the fields that stretched over the open earth. As the sun illuminated the place where pieces of Léon Larsson lay, the still twitching limbs curled up and burst into tongues of smoke and fire, starting a blaze that would begin to slowly spread across the woods.

When the sun fell upon the body of Howard Burns – what was left of him – the corpse did not move or twitch. Birds began to circle the fallen man, moving in to feed upon the kill of a beast greater than any they had known.

The sun did not fall upon Damien Langley, who disappeared from the place where he had been left and was not seen again by the long-lived. His shadow carried from the forests around Seneca Rocks to his home, to several unsuspecting towns, and finally to the graveyard that housed his wife. There he found the answer to a question he had died pursuing closure to: could the kiss of a vampire raise the dead back to life?

The sun discovered Levi Matthews laying alone in a grassy field, blood having ceased flowing from his innumerable wounds and eyes unblinkingly reflecting the light that gave all of Earth life. The muscles in his face had frozen along with the rest of his body, trapping him in a wide, brimming smile that stretched so widely it seemed to travel from ear to ear. He did not burn in the light…he welcomed it.

The sun did not find Oskar Eriksson or Elias Jamesson. Their footsteps vanished into the shadowed crevices of the forest and were lost among the woods, which loomed great and timeless and did not yield their secrets.

The moon rose and fell. When the sun came over the horizon once more, there lay only a patch of dirt disturbed in a wide field of grass with stones lain across and a cross of sticks propped into the earth. And the echo of a love that would reverberate through eternity.

∆

Here powers failed my high imagination: But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,
By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

– The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII

THE END